Losing Your Memory
by socasuallycruel
Summary: When Richard Castle's car is found torched and abandoned the investigation into the accident, and his disappearance, uncovers conflicting evidence. Kate knows he would never just walk away, but when a message ordering Kate to forget about him is found and a seemingly connected accident scene turns up clean, they may never be able to uncover the truth about what happened.
1. Chapter 1

I saw a post-finale video set to _Losing Your Memory_ by Ryan Star (there are a few of them, and I can't remember for sure which it was but I believe it was by MileyTheBest11) and in those few minutes listening to the combination of lyrics and dialogue from the show, I thought of a number of scenarios that I'd like to see play out. Here is the beginning of the culmination of a few days worth of listening to the full song on repeat and fleshing out the ideas that I liked/thought worked the best.

Hopefully it all translates to paper as well as it did in my head. Constructive criticism is always welcome. Reviews are well appreciated.

Enjoy.

* * *

_Call all your friends  
Tell them I'm never coming back  
'Cause this is the end  
Pretend that you want it, don't react_

_The damage is done  
The police are coming too slow now  
I would have died  
I would have loved you all my life_

* * *

The colors of East Hampton blend together into a chaotic palate as the driver rushes towards the address that the chief had delivered solemnly over the phone. Greens and browns overtake tans and blues swirling with whites and blacks, forming the whirlwind backdrop of her nightmare. Only… no, she confirms as they screech around a corner, almost jumping the curb, to spot lazy grey smoke columning towards the sky. No. She is wide-awake, and the man she was _this _close to marrying's car is down in a ditch and up in flames.

She's out of their getaway car before it's even in park, heels snagging her skirts before she has the frame of mind to haul them up in front of her, racing to the edge of the embankment with two hands full of white silk and chiffon. If his radio-silence and the report of an accident from Chief Brady hadn't been enough to fill her with unadulterated panic and dread, the sight of his car lit like the Olympic torch paired with his lack of presence on the scene certainly is.

"Oh God, Castle!" she chokes, falling forward as she reaches the curb. Her arms wrap around her knees and her head falls to her chest as she gasps in the heavy air, struggling to clear her lungs and her head. "Castle!" she screeches, so horribly she doesn't realize it's her at first. "Oh God, no!" she pleads desperately, lifting her head to watch the scorching wreck. Never has she felt more desperate, more helpless, or more alone. "Please."

Orange fingers lick over the roof, singeing the shiny silver paint until it begins to flake off. They dance out the driver's side window, a carefully choreographed back and forth as they fight with the breeze coming in off of the water. The putrid scent of melting leather and burning rubber wafts over but there she stays, tears trekking down her cheeks as she watches her fiancé's car burn. She can't bring herself to admit that she's probably watching him burn, as well. "Oh God," she whimpers, dropping her skirts to bring her hands to cover her mouth, shaking her head as her vision blurs with the sobs that she can't contain. "Castle, why," she cries. One hand travels down to clutch at her chest, her heart pounding painfully in its cage, fighting to be freed to search for its other half. How could it all go so horribly wrong? Just once, why couldn't she have gotten the long end of the stick?

_This was supposed to be our perfect day_. But once again, perfect had paved the way for disaster. For what felt like the thousandth time and was certainly the last, their chances were lost. Like fate is agreeing with her, the pressure and heat within the cab suddenly becomes too much and the remaining windows burst, sending shards of glass and a cloud of smoke out in all directions. Kate falls to the pavement behind her, elbow digging into the gravel as she prevents her head from smacking the concrete.

"Oh geeze, Detective Beckett, I'm sorry," she hears behind her. "I wanted to speak with you when you got here, before you saw… too late now, though. Here." She rolls onto her back to see Chief Brady standing over her, hand poised to assist.

"Chief Brady," she grimaces, wiping her face with one hand as he helps her stand. "I…" she pauses, realizing she has no words. "Thanks," she whispers, releasing his hand and bringing it over to rub the stinging patch on her arm. She heaves a sigh, swallowing back the next wave of grief so that she can try to have a real conversation. "I…" but still she has nothing.

"Why don't we move over here?" he suggests, palming her upper arm to lead her over to his car as a fire team finishes setting up their hose.

"Yeah, okay." She follows him quietly, tripping over her skirts again. They're already covered in ash and dirt, though, so who cares? Ruined, just like everything else. She brushes her hands over her hips as a distraction, finding a tear in the fabric just as the water bursts to life behind her. She fingers it, rubbing her hand along the frayed edge as Brady stares at her expectantly. "What?" she finally asks. When he doesn't respond she continues, hands clenched in the soiled fabrics to keep from lashing out, "I'm standing in front of you in my _wedding _dress, Chief Brady, while my fiancé's car shines like the goddamned sun behind me. You called me to come out here, so don't stare at me like you're waiting for me to start talking. I've got nothing. I've now lost more than anyone should ever bear, so I've _really _got nothing. I'm not going to ask you questions. I'm not going to take charge. I'm going to listen to whatever you have to say and then…" she trails off, shrugging her shoulder. "I don't know what to do here," she admits, the grief melting away to reveal a deadened emptiness as the men behind her attempt to drown the flames, the hissing of the water meeting the fiery metal making her cringe.

"Right," he says awkwardly, as though he had thought she would be ready to step up to the plate. "I-"

"Why don't you just tell me what happened?" she says monotonously, seeing him flounder. There's no other way to get through this than to suppress her emotions.

"Well," he nods. "We're not entirely clear on that yet. The witness who called it in said that Mr. Castle's car passed her by while she was at a red light. She said another car came up from behind her, blew the red light and followed on in the same direction as Mr. Castle. By the time she got _here_, Mr. Castle's car was at the bottom of the embankment and was already smoldering. She was unable to reach it to see if anyone was in need of assistance, but she called it right in. Nobody else passed before we got here, at which point it was too late to get to. We don't know if that other car was involved or not. There are a number of crossroads it could have turned off on, or it could have blown by Mr. Castle before anything even happened. One of my officers is trying to get a clearer description of that car from the witness as we speak." He nods towards one of the other chargers, where Kate sees an officer looking extremely impatiently at an elderly woman. _Great_.

"So really, we know nothing."

"Not yet," he confirms quietly, avoiding her gaze.

She bites the inside of her cheek, blinking away tears, as she turns to look at the wrecked car once more. "Please excuse me," she says, not caring whether he does or not as she pulls her phone out from her bra, dialing Martha before she can even begin to think what to say.

"Katherine, darling," she answers on the first ring. "Have you found Richard? How is he?"

"Martha, I… He… His car…" _Shit, _she swears to herself as her voice raises uncontrollably. She should have figured out how to do this before she made the call. "Martha, he didn't… there's no way… I'm so sorry," she sobs. "I'm _so_ sorry."

"Oh, oh no. I'll be right there."

"No!" she yells. "You shouldn't see this."

"Give us ten minutes," she says bravely, dismissing Kate's concern.

_Us. Oh, god. _"Martha, please. Do what you're going to do but do not bring Alexis out here. It's not fair. It's not right. It's not…" she trails off, unable to contain herself, failing to notice the call end. She stands there in a trance, phone still held to her ear, until she hears the slamming of a car door. Her hand drops away from her face as Martha catches her eye, pale as a ghost as she wraps Alexis into her side. They hadn't believed, either. Not until they were standing in front of the evidence. After everything that he had been through, how could it be a car accident that had finally done him in? It just didn't make sense, no matter how you looked at it.

Alexis breaks, face and eyes as red as her hair as she begins to panic. Kate stares, unsure how to begin to console her. She can't even console herself. But Martha steps in, ever the graceful leader, and wraps Kate up in her other arm. "There there, kiddos. We'll be all right." But even the actress can't keep the tremor out of her voice.

"What happened?" Alexis finally manages.

"They don't know. Not yet," Kate offers. "They have a witness, but she didn't see anything actually happen. Anything now is pure speculation."

"How could this happen?"

"I've been asking myself that all weekend," Kate coughs, almost a laugh. "After everything…. How could this've happened? …I'm so sorry," she repeats.

"It's not your fault, Kate," Alexis whimpers. "I just… I don't understand."

"None of us do, sweetheart," Martha tries to soothe her. "Nothing ever makes sense. Not like this."

They stand huddled together, hugging each other close as they watch the crews fighting the blaze.

"Excuse me, folks?" Brady has reappeared, interrupting. "I think it would be best if we took you down to the station. This probably isn't the best place for you as they initiate an investigation."

"Of course," Kate agrees, not wanting his daughter or his mother to see anything post-fire. This will already always be with them; to see _him_ after all this... But she, on the other hand, needs proof, knows she'll never be able to fully accept that he's gone until she sees him for herself. But she won't leave them to fend for themselves in the punishingly quiet police department, and so she takes the lead behind Chief Brady, pulling the other two behind her by the hands for support. If all had gone to plan, they would've been family now. Officially, at least. And they all need family, now. They won't ever get through this without it, and as they all squeeze into the back seat of the squad car Alexis leans her head onto Kate's shoulder, closing her eyes and trying to remain fully present as Martha, on the other side, clutches Alexis' hand in the one that is not wrapped around herself, in a faux display of holding herself together.

It's quiet, other than their sniffles and coughs, for the short duration of the drive. They're herded into Brady's office once they arrive, left to sit and stew in the prospects of their future without Richard Castle.

They're mostly silent while they wait, for what only God knows. Only the occasional noise of grief, and the brief period where it seems like every phone in the building rings, interrupt their sorrowful thoughts.

Two years ago, when Kate had almost lost him the first time, it would have been almost bearable. She'd never truly had him, never imagined what a genuine future she could have with him. But after that night, and everything since... losing her mother had been the worst thing that could ever happen to her... until Castle. It was one thing to lose her biggest role model, her confidante, someone that had been there for her her entire life. It seemed like the worst tragedy. But it was on a whole other level to lose someone like Castle... he was her best friend, there through thick and thin, able to overcome all of the odds with her. He was her lover, her fighter, her everything. Now that she'd experienced it, grown used to it, how was she to go home to a place where he no longer was? How could she go home to spend her evenings quietly, no longer discussing casework, or drafts, or weekend plans? How could she live the rest of her life without ever putting her arms around him again, without his fingers running through her hair, without snuggling up to him when the alarm went off? Now that she'd had that future right at her fingertips, she didn't know how to live in a world where it no longer existed.

_And how selfish_, she thinks. Because she's lost her mother, and she knows what it's like. It may no longer be the worst thing in her life but it is the worst in Alexis', and she's sitting here crying over her own lost future. Until Alexis meets her own future, she'll be just like Kate. Except this time, there'll be someone there for her. Kate, and her grandmother, and they won't fall into the bottle like her own father had. She'd learned from his mistakes, and her own loss, and no matter what she was going through, she had to remember that Alexis was going through something equally terrible. She needed to hold it together, at least while the girl was present. She could cry for her own loss when she was on her own. She left her place by the window, making her way to sit on the old brown couch next to Alexis, and held her hand out in offering. She contemplated it, tilting her head, and bursting into a fresh wave of tears as she grabbed it tightly. It would take time, but they could do this. _We have to do this._

"I have some bad news, and some good news, and then some more bad news," Brady says when he reappears over an hour later. "There's an abandoned SUV up in flames over in South Hampton. It's similar to the description we finally got out of our witness. This is purely speculation, but there's a fair chance that they're connected, which means something more sinister is going on than an accident. Next, you'll all be very relieved to know that Mr. Castle was not in his car."

"Oh my god," the women celebrate in unison, releasing their collectively held breath, laughing in relief. Kate lays her head back against the couch, smiling for the first time since ending her call with Castle. _We don't have to do this_.

"Unfortunately, we have no idea where he is."


	2. Chapter 2

"How," she trails off in shock, hand waving aimlessly in the air, "How can you not know where he is? His car, his _empty _car," she gasps out, "was torched. Where would he have possibly gone? Where could he possibly be?"

"Well we're doing everything we can to track him down, Detective, but as I once told you: This is the Hamptons. We don't have many resources." Chief Brady shrugs, sitting down at his desk and powering on his computer.

"This is ridiculous," she mutters, standing up and stalking out of the office. She pulls out her phone and dials his number, even though she'd tried him a hundred times before getting to the scene and knows that his phone is off. "What the hell are you doing, Rick?" she sighs into the receiver, hanging up before leaving a message. _What is going on?_

As immense as the relief at hearing that he was not in his car is, it's overshadowed by a new feeling of dread. Because she knows, now, that Castle didn't die in a car accident. But she doesn't know where he is, and if he were all right he would have contacted somebody. He would have called her, and if his phone had been ruined in the car he would have trekked down the street to the café or one of the many other amenities. But he hadn't, and his phone is off, and he is gone. _What the hell?_

"Kate?" Alexis says quietly, following after and resting her hand on her shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"I'm trying to be," Kate compromises, turning to face his daughter. "He wasn't in the car," she smiles, making eye contact, "and I am _so _relieved. But if he wasn't in the car, _where is he_? His phone is off, has been since before Chief Brady even called me. So was it destroyed? Is that why he wasn't there, he went off in search of a phone? But the woman who called in the accident never saw him… he could've gone the other way, but we should've heard from him by now."

"So he didn't die in the accident," Alexis chokes out a relieved sort of laugh, not yet processing the rest of the information.

"It doesn't seem like it," Kate confirms.

"But something still happened to him," Alexis catches up, relief fading.

"I can't imagine he's perfectly okay right now," Kate shakes her head, agreeing. "He would have found some way to let us know he was all right. So that leaves us with two options," she shrugs painfully. "Either he crashed the car himself, a distraction, buying time to run, or-"

"He would never do that to you," Alexis denies vehemently, cutting her off. "How could you even begin to suggest that he would make us think he was _dead_ so that he could run away? How _dare _you?"

"Alexis, I'm not suggesting that he was running," Kate tries to smooth it over. "I'm trying to think logically here, and one of the logical options is that he walked away of his own free will. I can't imagine that your dad would ever do that to me, and I _know _that he would never leave _you _hanging like this. Now, he could have gone off in search of help but been hurt; he could have passed out, fallen, something. But I think somebody would have seen him if that were the case, which brings me to the second option: somebody grabbed him. He may have crashed on his own and been picked up on his way for help, or, as the second burning car suggests to me, somebody else caused, or staged, the accident to cover their tracks."

"Why would anybody do that?" Alexis cries. "Who would do something like that?"

"Like we said before, Alexis, we can only speculate right now. I have some ideas," she swallows painfully, images of Bracken and his cronies, Tyson and his plastic surgeon, and any number of other disgruntled criminals or fans flashing through her mind. "But I think the best thing to do is to wait for CSU to sweep the scenes, see what we can get off of traffic cams and his phone records, before we say anything for certain." The prospect of having to wait even another minute crushes her, weighs down on her like nothing ever has before. She needs answers _now_.

"That could take days!" Alexis cries. "He could be dead by then!"

Kate bites her tongue before she reminds Alexis that he could be dead now. If the accident was a setup, as she is beginning to strongly suspect, then she has no idea what they're dealing with. They could get lucky, some sociopath searching for a ransom, and have Castle home in a matter of days. Somehow she doubts that that's the case, though, and she expects that it won't be an easy ride for any of them.

"We're going to figure this out," Kate promises, praying that it's not empty. "We're going to bring him home, no matter what happened." If only she could believe herself.

"What if this is it?" Alexis cries, throwing her arms out to the sides helplessly. "After everything he's been through, all of the things he shouldn't have survived, what if this is what does him in?"

"Let's not think like that right now. It's still early, and maybe it'll all be a fluke. Maybe he got himself lost," she tries to laugh it off, picturing him cutting through the woods across the street instead of walking down the side of the road, anything other than what she's becoming more and more certain is the reality.

"You don't really believe that," Alexis whispers.

"No…. I don't," she sighs, wrapping her arm around the girl and squeezing. "C'mon. Let's go see what happens next."

She wants to take charge. She wants to take charge so badly, Brady proving that he yet again has no idea what he's doing. But she's in no state of mind to lead an investigation right now, knows she holds a bias and will find evidence where there is none and miss it where it is. Which is why she agrees with him when he suggests that the women return home, wait for the reports to come back and see where they are the next day. As much as they all want to be there for each new piece of information that comes in, they all need to rest. She especially needs to get a clear head so that she can take an unbiased perspective in the investigation into his disappearance. _Castle_.

"Kate, your dress," Alexis points out mournfully when they step out into the sun. She steps forward, brushing her hand over the dirtied chiffon, pulling one end of a tear up to meet the other.

"Doesn't matter now," she brushes it off, fighting back the tears once more. She can't cry for her ruined dress, not when he's out there somewhere, who knows where. Of course, when she thinks about it, it's just another metaphor for their ruined perfect day. "Let's just go."

Martha calls for their driver, and three of them sure are a sight for sore eyes as they lean against the building while they wait. Kate: tall, elegant, marked. Alexis: smaller, beautiful face smeared with drying tears. Martha: making every attempt at holding it together for her girls and, by proxy, Richard. All three with reddened, swollen eyes, tears lurking in their depths. Minds racing, the worse imaginable thoughts at the forefront.

When they get home it's practically abandoned, guests, caterers, and clergy all cleared out. Kate stands at the edge of the back patio, the white chairs and archway spanning out before her.

_It all fell apart. _She sighs, stepping down to the grass, strolling down what was to be the aisle. She imagines everyone they'd invited, picturing them in the seats, ducking her head down as they all watch her walk towards him. Finally she reaches the end, kisses her father on the cheek, pretending she doesn't see the tears in his eyes as he nudges her towards him. And there he is, standing proudly under the archway, head held high as he beams at her.

"Kate, Sweetie?"

And just like that, it's all gone.

"Kate?" Lanie prods again, coming up to stand beside her best friend.

"It's all gone, Lane," Kate rasps, throat raw from the combination of smoke, screams, and standing on the precipice of sobs. "Fallen apart. Our perfect day." She can't let it go, may never let it go. "I don't know how to do this," she shudders, falling into Lanie. "Tell me how to do this."

"Oh Kate. You don't know what's happened, not yet. Don't do this to yourself. He could be on his way home right now."

"You don't really believe that," she chokes out Alexis' words.

"No, I don't," Lanie admits, frowning. "I just don't want to see you fall down this cliff. Not again."

"Part of me laughs at the idea of ever falling down again. I came out the other end and I'm stronger for it," Kate grits. "But the other part of me knows that this will be so much worse than my mother. I don't know how to keep my head up. I don't know how to pretend that I'm okay. I don't think that I can let this go."

"Sweetie, a few years ago you never would have admitted any of that, to me or to yourself. You're already doing this, and we're going to be fine. We're going to get through this."

"I don't know how," Kate repeats, turning back to their wedding arch, watching him reach out for her hand to slip on the ring, leaning in to kiss her immediately after, too eager to wait. "Somewhere along the line, he became everything. He made me a better person, but I don't know if I can be that person without him."

They stand side-by-side, the two parts of Kate battling each other as they watch the sky darken before them, the sun setting feeling like the sealing of their fate. Tomorrow was a new day, a giving her time to gather herself before diving into their investigation, but it was also a day farther away from Castle. A day was plenty of time to tear him apart, lock him away, bury him… tomorrow he could be gone, and she could never know, living her life with the hope that she would see him again one day, or she could stumble upon it one day, and know that she would never see him again.

She can't decide which is worse.


	3. Chapter 3

Thank you to all who have followed and/or favorited. It's incredible to have people interested in what I have to say. Even so, it is a little disconcerting to have no reviews yet. I'm not going to site here and beg or hold chapters hostage, but I don't know of any author who doesn't thrive on reviews. It is disappointing to not see the number change, even with the addition of follows and favorites. Whether it's positive or negative, I would love to hear what your feedback. Constructive criticism, theories, questions, and the like.

Thank you, and enjoy.

* * *

Martha retires early, unable to maintain the graceful, optimistic façade she's been adopting all evening. Alexis locks herself away just a few minutes later and Kate can hear her crying from the other end of the house.

"I should have seen this coming," she sighs pitifully, plopping down on a kitchen barstool, laying her head in her arms on the island counter. Everything they'd been through, all of the obstacles thrown in their way, everything that had tried to push them apart, it all should have told her that they wouldn't make it. "But we were so close," she whimpers, curling in on herself. "We almost did."

She pushes herself up, skirts swishing as she jumps down and around the corner, pulling a crystal tumbler out of the highest cabinet and slamming it onto the counter. "I should've known," she seethes, spilling his scotch all over the counter as she tips it carelessly over the lip of the glass. "I should've known." She throws the glass back and pours another, picking it up and carrying both the drink and the bottle up the stairs. She kicks open the door to their bedroom, cringing as it crashes into the wall, and clunks the glass and bottle down on the table behind the bed.

She reaches behind her, struggling to unbutton the top of her dress by herself, wiggling and jumping and bending and twisting until she slips the button through the hole and unzips the zipper. She steps out of it quickly, kicking it onto the chair in the corner, and stalks over to fireplace in the wall, turning on the gas and flipping the lighter. The fire roars to life, licking over the anchor like the flames licking over the roof of his car. She steps back, mesmerized by the sudden heat and glaring light.

The flames bounce off of the mirror on the wall, the reflections causing her entire body to glow yellow. She turns to look, scowling at her rumpled, forlorn self, the complete opposite of everything she should've been right now. She unclasps the lacy white bustier, rips off the garter, belt, and panties, and throws them all into the fireplace in a fit of rage.

She stands there, chest heaving, some misguided sense of pleasure accompanying the guilt and grief in watching them burn to little more than ash and blackened wire. "Aaaaagh!" she shrieks, whirling around to grab her robe off of the bed and yank it on. She stalks out into the hallway, glass in hand and all the dramatic flair that Martha usually supplies. She stomps down the stairs and into his office, throwing herself into the oversized chair and rifling through all of the drawers until she finds a notebook, laying it open in front of her and scribbling his name across the top of the first page with an angry flourish.

She splits the page into two columns, one labeled "abduction" and the other labeled "runaway." She leaves the second column blank, as it doesn't seem at all realistic to her, and focuses on the first column, writing "accident" at the top. Underneath she writes "staged" and halfway down she writes "accident" again, continuing on like this and scribbling in all of the information she has so far, both evidence and assumed, until she has her own little preliminary case file, ideas to pitch to the investigators tomorrow and blanks to fill with whatever they find.

When she's all theoried out she relents, dropping the pen onto the notebook and slumping back into the chair. She picks up her drink, considering the glass in hand. She shouldn't be losing herself in it, relying on the alcohol to help her forget the pain, but she thinks she's entitled to it tonight. Just one night. So she throws back this second serving of scotch, swiping up her case and returning to the bedroom to pour another glass.

Halfway through she pauses, setting the bottle back up right. "Fuck it," she gives up, emptying the glass and then leaving it behind, fisting the bottle instead as she returns to the ground floor, sweeping back out the French doors opening out onto the lawn, avoiding looking at the wedding setup as she bolts for the beach.

She trips across the sand, flying down to the water's edge, and digs her feet in at the line where the waves break. The wind breezes through her hair, blowing inland from the Atlantic. She takes a deep breath in, letting her head fall back, hair blowing out behind her, as she raises her arms to the side. She stands like that until the Scotch hits her, swaying on the beach until she loses her balance. She continues to sit at the water's edge, feet in the sand, until she's gotten through half of the bottle.

"No more, Kate," she sighs, dribbling some of the last swig down her chin as she caps it and lets it fall to the ground beside her. "Gitit together," she scolds, wiping the spill away with the back of her hand. "Be'n adult."

_I don't want to be an adult_. She pouts, falling back into the sand, and stares at the stars. You could never see them like this at home, and for that she's grateful. Soon she'll have to go home, and they won't be there to throw their twinkling hopefulness in her face. _Fucking stars_. She raises both hands, flipping the bird to the sky until she can't hold them up anymore.

Only when the water reaches her hips does she move, scooting back and pulling her knees into her chest, blinking as she tries to focus on the lights of a ship chugging steadily across the horizon.

Tugboat, ocean liner, or tanker, she can't quite tell from this distance. Whatever it is she wishes she were on it, sailing far away from this darkened reality and anywhere, anywhere else. _Just take me away_.

The tears start to fall again, mixing with the sprinkles of salt and water that flick up with every crash and break of the waves. She moves to stand, grabs the scotch, and stumbles back a few feet with her overestimated upward momentum. "Just take me anywhere where there's no such thing as pain, no such thing as loss. Take me somewhere where happy endings are real possibilities. Take me somewhere where I can finally be okay." _Take me to him_. She lets her head fall back, arms thrown out to the sides once again, as though bracing herself to be beamed to another place.

She's just kidding herself, though. Those places don't exist, and nobody is listening to her desperate pleas.

"Just go to bed, Kate," she sighs, shaking her head. And so she turns, listening to herself, and makes her way back up the beach, past the setting of the fairytale wedding that was never meant to be. She deposits the bottle on the island on her way through the kitchen, trips on the third to last stair and gives up, crawling her way back to their bedroom.

"I can have this one night," she reasons. "One night to be pathetic and drunk." She affirms the decision by rolling onto her back, eyes glued to the flickering of one of the outside lights, dancing around on the swirling ceiling, as soon as she clears the doorway.

"Of all the times I've deserved that one night, this is definitely a good time to cash in." She kicks the door shut and stretches out. It only takes a few minutes before she can't stand the silence anymore and she rises, unbelting her robe and letting it fall to the carpet as she crosses the room to flip the switch on the fireplace, waiting for the flames to die down before she looks away. "Just like my dreams."

_Ugh_. "I've got to stop talking to myself." So she buries herself under the comforter, silence becoming her only companion until she finally finds solace in sleep.

The sun wakes her in the morning, forcing her lids open with its blinding fingers, piercing through the gaps in the curtains. She sits up slowly, head still a little spinny and her body lethargic. She runs her hands through her messy, fallen hair as she looks around, ripping out each bobby pin she finds and dropping them to the comforter as she takes in the massive, empty room around her, grayed dress in a careless ball on the armchair in the corner, robe left in the middle of the floor.

She hauls herself out of bed and paces over to the chair in the corner, reaching out cautiously, running her fingers over the damaged fabric. "I'm so sorry, Mom," she mourns, lifting the dress gingerly, straightening wrinkles and creases in the skirt as she holds it up, stretching on tiptoes so she doesn't trip over it as she goes to hang it up in the closet. She picks the robe up off of the ground as she crosses the room again, slinging it on the hook on the bathroom door as she clicks it shut, preparing to shower.

Her eyes are still red, from the hangover and the sorrow both. Her makeup is smeared all down her cheeks, caked into her pores and her laugh lines. She leans in to the mirror, fighting to disentangle the last few clips from the rat's nest her hair has become. She doesn't bother trying to brush it out, jumping right under the spray and dumping half of what's left of her conditioner on her head.

When she's all done she takes a second, leaning her forehead against the cold tiles of the shower wall as the warm water beats down on her, psyching herself up to get through the day.

She dresses quickly when she's ready, pulling a t-shirt and jeans from the top of the pile out of the dresser and tossing her hair up in a sloppy ponytail, brushing her teeth almost as an afterthought before she goes to find the others.

Martha is sitting at the island, an untoasted bagel and a cup of coffee perched on the counter before her. She's slouched over them, staring somberly at her index finger chipping at the edge of the granite. "Oh, good morning, Katherine," she tries to smile, the usual lilt absent from her words.

"Morning, Martha," she responds, not even attempting to offer the woman a smile. She rounds the counter, pours herself a cup of coffee, and turns, leaning back against the counter across from his mother. She couldn't eat if she tried, even if nausea wasn't rippling through her.

"So, what is our plan?" Martha asks quietly, pushing away her uneaten breakfast and clasping her hands in front of her. "How to we proceed from here?"

"Well," Kate contemplates, taking a gulp of her drink before setting it down behind her and crossing her arms. "I'm going to go back down to the station, see if I can get a rush on all of the reports. I'm going to see if they've gotten anything back on traffic cams or witnesses. I'm going to call the precinct and get them to pull and fax over his phone records. And then… I don't know. It's going to depend on what we find."

"Are you going to put his picture out?" Martha questions. "Shouldn't we have done so yesterday?"

"I don't…" Kate trails off. "I think it would be better to get a better grasp on the situation before we let the media on," she admits. "I want to try to narrow down as many details as we can before we release anything. Honestly… I don't think the media, or the public, are going to be of any help in bringing him home. I can't be certain, not yet, but I don't think this was random, and I don't think it was someone looking for money. I think…" she starts to cry again. "I think this was very intentional, and I don't think those intentions were anything other than malicious."

"I suspected as much," Martha nods, her own eyes filling with tears. "Please be safe, Katherine. Whatever happens, whatever you find… please be smart. I want him back just as badly as you do, but I don't want to lose you, too. Richard would never want anything to happen to you at his expense or for his sake."

"I know he wouldn't," she swallows back the lump in her throat. "I know he wouldn't. But this whole situation, it could be the reverse. He could be that he is wherever he is because of me, and I will do everything I can to bring him home," she vows. She dumps the rest of her coffee down the drain and lifts her keys off the hook by the door. "_Everything_."

* * *

_Invitation only, grand farewells_

_Crash the best one of the best ones_

_Clear liquor and cloudy-eyed _

_Too early to say goodnight._

-Stolen, Dashboard Confessional

* * *

Thoughts?


	4. Chapter 4

Sorry for the wait! I got a job, had a summer course, and had some other things to focus on. Much thanks to the few of you that answered my pleas for feedback, and thanks to those who've followed and favorited.

* * *

When she reaches the department, she's not quite sure what to expect. Definitely not the flurry of activity that she enters to find, small crowds here and there so dense she doesn't know who to focus on. She spots Ryan in the corner on the phone, jaw clenched, and makes her way over to him. He hangs up when he spots her, holding his hands out in a feeble attempt to… he doesn't know. He can't calm her, can't stop her. Nobody can, not now. "That was Tori," he explains instead, pocketing his cell. "His phone is off or dead and can't be traced. Nothing unusual popped in his records."

"Okay," she nods. "I expected that. What else? Do we have anything else?"

"I dunno, Boss; I was on phone records. Esposito went off to track down traffic reports and footage and Captain Gates is pressuring CS to put out the reports on the cars."

She purses her lips and blows, contemplating her next actions. "Okay. Thanks, Ryan."

"Of course. We're gonna get him, Kate. Only a matter of time."

"Yeah," she agrees half heartedly as Chief Brady appears next to her.

"Where's that scary lady friend of yours? I have the reports she's been demanding."

"The CS reports?" Kate brightens up considerably. "I'll take them." She rips them from his grasp before he can respond and turns on her heel, throwing them onto the nearest empty desk and planting herself behind it.

The first is the report on Castle's car. All signs point to arson as the cause of the fire, but there is a distinct lack of evidence that anybody other than Castle was ever in or near it. Traces of accelerant and identifying scorch marks are accompanied by a painful lack of foreign fingerprints or DNA.

She shuffles those pages aside and dives into the report on the torched SUV found the next town over. At first it seems like the same deal; accelerant and scorching patterns, no fingerprints or DNA. On the fourth page is where it gets interesting. The car had dealer plates, which traced back to a Ford dealership located in Milford, Connecticut. A teenager and her father had taken it for a test drive and when they didn't return, the car had been reported stolen.

Security screenshots show a short, skinny brunette next to a man of average height with a leather jacket and a baseball cap. Both of their faces are conveniently angled away from the camera at all times, a note on the back of the photo reports. "Hey Ryan," she calls out, looking up from the pages.

"What's up?" he asks, appearing behind her.

"Can you get in touch with Connecticut police and state troopers? I need to track this vehicle's path. Hopefully we can see if they made any stops before coming here and hopefully we can get an angle where we can see their faces enough to identify at least one of them."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Yo Boss," Esposito calls from a doorway across the floor. "We've got one solid image of the driver of the car just before it bypassed our witness: Caucasian male, looks to be anywhere from mid-twenties to fourties, it's kind of hard to tell, baseball cap. Can't tell hair color but I don't recognize him. I've already sent it to Tori to run through recognition."

"It's just him in the car?"

"Unless he's got somebody laying down on the floor in the back, it's just him."

"Find out what happened to that girl," she orders, turning back to Ryan. "We need to speak to her."

"Girl?" Esposito asks, lost.

"Yeah, the SUV was stolen from a dealership in Connecticut," Ryan repeats. "By a man and a teenage girl."

"_What the fuck_," Kate whispers, taking the traffic photo from Esposito to stare the man down. Try as she might, she doesn't recognize him either. "Who are you, you bastard?"

She releases the photograph, letting it float down to the scuffed grey coating of the desk before her. Ryan has left to look into the teenager, Esposito watches her carefully from his doorway. Who knows where Gates has gone off to.

In reality, nobody is paying attention to her but it feels as though she's suffocating under the pressure of everybody's stares. She pushes back forcefully, stopping the chair from crashing onto the concrete floor just in time, and rushes from the room, coming to a stop on the front steps of the building. She pulls her phone out, crouching down and curling into herself, struggling to breathe as she dials.

She freezes when it rings, holding her breath when the click of a connection sounds out. "Hello?" A female voice crackles.

"Who is this?" Kate demands, practically jumping to her feet.

"Well, uh, my name's Lana. Do you know who's phone this is?"

"It's my fiancés," Kate replies, trying to keep her voice calm. "Why do you have it?"

"I found it at the edge of the beach this morning. It's got a pass code, so I couldn't call anybody, but I figured somebody would call it eventually."

"Where are you, Lana? I'll come and get it." She copies down the address and takes off, grabbing Esposito's keys from right out under his nose.

She knocks furiously on the patio doors, as per Lana's instruction, too frantic to even begin to take in the expansive mansion in front of hers. It was at least twice the size of Castle's, with an extra floor and two extra wings.

A teenager comes cautiously down the stairs, peeking through the glass. "Are you Lana?" Kate asks loudly. "I'm here for the phone."

"Oh," she sees the girl mouth before she hops down the steps to unlock the back door. "Sorry about that. Lana's my mother; she said you'd be coming by, but she had to run out. Let me go get it."

"Your fiancés not a very popular guy, is he?" she laughs.

"What makes you say that?" Kate asks, grabbing the phone perhaps a little more forcefully than she needs too.

"We've had it all day, you're the only one that's tried to contact him."

"Well he's a little indisposed right now," Kate sighs, trying not to cry as she hits the home button, revealing a candid of herself in the window seat in his office, smiling out at the sunshine. She types in his pass code, 5283, and immediately opens the recent call log and his camera roll to see if anything is out of the ordinary, but she's his last incoming and outgoing calls and the last photos in line are a series of selfies of him in his tux. _Dork_.

"Whoa, your fiancé is Richard Castle?! I am _so _sorry about my comment earlier – I saw his car on the news! I am _so _sorry."

"You didn't know, Hon. It's all right. Thank you, for holding on to the phone. And please thank your mother."

"Of course," she agrees immediately. "If there's anything else," she trails off. "If you need somebody unknown? Y'know, undercover operations? I'm totally there."

"Thank you for the offer," Kate grins. "But that won't be necessary. Have a good day."

"Yeah, you too," the girl replies sadly. "Good luck."

She returns to Espo's car, locking the doors behind her and sitting back heavily. She stares at the phone for a minute, twisting it this way and that as though, in the right light, at the right angle, it will reveal everything that she is looking for. She unlocks it again, eyes sweeping across the folders on the home screen, before she double clicks the button to show her which apps he'd had open.

Pictures, phone, a recording app? She smashes her finger on the icon, sending it into full screen, and sees that the top audio file was saved barely minutes after they'd hung up with each other.

She stops breathing, choking before she can bring herself to begin again, and throws the engine into drive. She can't do this alone.

The first person she sees when she returns to the precinct is Espo, so she grabs him by the elbow and drags him to the first vacant room she can find, which happens to be the maintenance closet. The phone is thrust into his hand and she turns around to face the wall, hand over her mouth.

"What the hell is going on?" he demands.

"Unlock it," she whispers.

"Well what's the code?" he asks, exasperated, when he slides the bar over to find a code is requires.

"5283," she sighs quietly.

"Come again?"

"5283! It's my name," she makes it easier.

"What is this, Beckett?" he asks quietly, the menu and list of recordings displayed in front of him.

"Press play."

There's a sound of fumbling, at first. A muffled swear and a crack. When his is voice is finally heard he sounds worried, almost. Frenzied, definitely. It's like he's being careful, but at the same time can't wait to run. "Beckett. Kate," he sighs reverently. "I… I'm alive. You deserve that, at the very least. Don't look for me; I'll be all right, not that you should care now. Just… Just know that I loved you," his words come more rushed, the sound of a car door slamming in the near-distance. "I know that after everything we've been through, all of our promises, it doesn't seem like much. But I loved you, Kate, so much, and I'm sorry that it wasn't enough." The beginnings of a shout are cut off as the audio cuts off.

"What does this mean?" he asks eventually.

"I dunno," she shrugs, throat tight. "Kind of sounds like he ditched," she admits. "But what were those noises in the beginning? And why would he rush through it so much? He should've had plenty of time. And at the end, who shouted? What were they saying, and why did he cut it off? No, I don't believe he ditched. I'll never accept that."

"I'll get the recording to tech," Esposito offers, hand on the doorknob. "I agree; this isn't right."

* * *

Reviews are lovely. I know there are a lot of other fics going on with the same concept and I'd like to know what I'm doing right, and what I'm doing wrong. xo


	5. Chapter 5

After the show premiered back I lost quite a bit of my drive, as a couple of their devices were something I'd been planning. After that horrific episode about why he really disappeared, though, the drive came back in full swing. Said plot devices aren't similar enough that I felt I needed to really change anything, so here we go again.

When I post lyrics at the bottom of chapters, I basically had the song on repeat while writing and that particular verse is what stuck out the most.

* * *

"Tori has come at the recording from Castle's phone with everything she has," Esposito sighs, plopping down next to her in the precincts dingy break room. "Enhancing it was a waste of time," he shakes his head, stealing her mug of coffee and taking a sip. "You know what she found? What she was able to make loud and clear enough to hear? A fuckin' gull. There's nothing recognizable about the shout at the end; it doesn't last long enough."

"And the sounds at the beginning?" she asks, trying to hide the hope in her voice.

"Sounds like he dropped the phone," he shrugs. "Nothing insightful."

"Oh." She takes back her coffee, spinning it in a circle on the table in front of her. "Did you see Ryan out there? Has he gotten anything back from Connecticut?"

"He's been locked up in one of the offices for almost an hour now. Not sure if that's a good sign or not."

"Seeing as not much is proving to be a good sign today…" she trails off, standing up and taking her coffee over to the sink, dumping the remainder down the drain and depositing the mug against the rusting metal rack on the left side. "Call me when he gets done with them?" she requests, turning to face him. "I can't just sit here and hope for the best while doing nothing. I need to go for a run or something."

"'Course, Beckett. Be careful."

"Usually am," she smiles sadly, knocking her hand against his shoulder as she leaves.

She barely remembers the drive back to the house, mind overflowing yet somehow relentlessly empty at the same time. She changes into her athletics and goes to grab her iPod on the way out, stopping when she sees his laying nearby and choosing that instead. She unlocks it and goes to his playlist page, choosing the one named after her and setting it to shuffle. It contains a collection of sappy love songs and pumped up songs that apparently reminded him of her _fiery personality_.

With the volume jacked up as loudly as it can go she ventures back down the stairs, bolting out across the back lawn and towards the beach as soon as she's got the sliding door securely shut.

She runs for over an hour, returning only when her lungs sear and the phantom pulls of her scars cause her to double over, unable to catch a complete breath. When she makes it back to the house she bypasses the kitchen, ignoring her body's desperate pleas for cold water and using the banister to pull herself up the stairs and to their room. She rinses off and redresses quickly, heart still calming in her chest as she checks her cell for any news from Esposito.

_Ryan's got state police techies following SUV on cams. We have a copy of his driver's license from dealer; running now to see if legit. _

She texts back to let him know she's on her way back to the precinct, but as she reaches the front door Alexis calls out from the kitchen.

"Did you find anything?" she asks when Kate enters the room, her eyes swollen and red from crying and a crystal tumbler like the one Kate had used the night before clutched in her hands, and something tells Kate it's not apple juice that she's drinking.

"We've got some potential leads that we're tracking down right now," Kate nods. "But I don't know how far they're going to go."

"Can you talk about them?" Alexis begs, her wild eyes desperate for information.

"Well, there's not a whole lot to talk about," Kate warns. "We know where the other car that they found came from; a dealership in Connecticut. But we don't know who the driver that stole it is; that's one of the things we're trying to figure out right now. It was a man and a teenaged girl; none of the dealer's cameras show their faces but we have a copy of the license he gave before taking the car for a test run and they're checking the validity of it as we speak. Connecticut police are also working on tracking the car from the dealer to the border. Once we know where it came in, we can get New York police to continue its path.

"Your dad also made a voice recording right before he disappeared. It doesn't offer much in terms of clues, though; he makes it sound like he's running."

"He would never," Alexis gasps indignantly."

"I know he wouldn't, Alexis, and there's another voice in the last few seconds that doesn't really support that he was. But if that's the case, he tried to make it sound like he was running, gone voluntarily, and we have no idea why."

"You will," she says confidently, nodding to herself firmly. "You're the best at what you do, Kate. You're dedicated and quick on the mark… You make everything personal, and that's how I know if anyone can find him, it's you."

"Thank you, Alexis," she sighs, coming around the island to give her a hug. "I will do everything I can to bring you back your father. Whatever it takes," she promises, squeezing her shoulder before she gets back on the path to the precinct. "_Whatever_ it takes," she repeats to herself resolutely as she gets into the car. _I will never stop._

When she arrives back she finds her partners seated across from each other at one of the standard desks, Gates looking over Ryan's shoulder as he points something out to Esposito.

"What did you find?" she asks, coming to lean over the latter.

"Only some info on the license so far, and it's not great," Ryan cautions. "The ID number belongs to a woman from Greenwhich named Reagan Ford. Unis are trying to get in touch with her for an interview, and we're trying to run the photograph from the ID through facial recognition. The address on it does not exist."

"So if Reagan Ford doesn't recognize him, we're back to square one."

"Not if she's in on it," he shrugs.

"Pull her history," Kate orders, standing up. "See if there's anything to indicate she's a part of this."

"On it," the two say at once, jumping into action. This could be it. This could be a real lead, and they both knew they couldn't afford to waste any time.

Kate's hands come up to clench the hair on either side of her head, clutching painfully as she watches her partners split off into different directions. She feels so useless, sitting around whenever a new possibility comes up, waiting on the sidelines as everyone else struggles for their goals.

"Detective Beckett," Gates says somberly, startling her as she rests her hands gently on each of Kate's and pries them loose. "I truly don't have the words to express myself the way that I wish I could. I know you're stressed, frightened, hurting, but tearing out your hair is not how you get through this. Putting on your brave face is not how you get through this. You get through this by relying on your partners, your _friends_, and by letting them bear the heaviest loads and helping them decipher them. You cannot do this on your own. You cannot run around leading the chase on something like this, it's too much. Come back to the break room and sit with me, and when they have Ms. Ford's histories we'll find anything that's there."

Her heart is pounding in her chest, working through everything the captain has said. She knows, of course, that this is not something she can take point on, something she can control, and while Gates' assurances are somewhat… well, reassuring… she can't help but to still feel mostly useless. Thankfully, they aren't made to wait long before she has Reagan's information to comb through.

The woman is thirty-two and single, a high-ranking associate at a contracting firm in Hartford, and she's got nothing worse than a red-light cam on her record. "This is useless. Completely and utterly… _useless_," she sighs. _Just like me._

"Be that as it may, she's agreed to meet with me for an interview in the morning," Ryan tells her. "It may lead nowhere… that seems to be our trend, after all. But I have a good feeling, Beckett. She made it sound like she had something to say." Or maybe he was just trying desperately to find the light in the dark, ever the optimist.

"Go home, Kate. Spend some time with Martha and Alexis, get a good night's sleep. In the morning we should have some more info about the SUV's path, Reagan Ford's story, and maybe even an ID on the man from the dealership. The sun will still be shining tomorrow."

* * *

_And we're gonna be alright _

_Dry your tears and hold tight _

_Can't you tell? I got news for you _

_Sun is shining and so are you_

-Sun is Shining, Axwell Λ Ingrosso


	6. Chapter 6

She spends that night in front of the fire, Alexis at her side and Martha nowhere to be found. The two stare as the flames crackle and pop, licking up the brick and mortar of their enclosure. Neither woman can find something to say, out of hopeful words to offer the other, and the constant dance the flames take is their only comfort, inducing the calm lull they've both fallen into.

"Can I hear it?" Alexis finally asks, her voice devoid of inflection.

"What?" Kate asks quietly, turning her head to meet her eyes.

"The recording Dad left. Will you play it for me? Please?" she requests, shifting on the couch to face Kate more fully.

She sighs, sitting up properly and laying her hand on Alexis' knee. "Okay," she agrees, squeezing as she stands to go get her phone. "It won't be as clear as the original. His phone is in evidence and I just recorded the recording."

"It doesn't matter," Alexis decides, shaking her head. "I just need to hear it." She brings her knees to her chest and hugs them close as Kate sits back down next to her, pressing hip to hip. "I know it won't change anything and I know there's nothing I'll get from it that you didn't…. I just need to hear it."

Kate presses play on her own recording app and the audio plays out for the… she doesn't even know how many times anymore. Each time she listens to it, she thinks that maybe somehow it will be different. He'll make a joke, tell her he'll see her soon, leave a clue to where he's gone… but it plays exactly as it has all along; the fumbling sounds and swears and shouts, his pleas to not come after him, how he swears that he loved her but it wasn't enough... nothing changes.

"I don't understand," Alexis sniffs, looking up from the phone to Kate with a furrowed brow, eyes shiny and redder than her hair. "This isn't him. Nothing about that sounded like Dad. He couldn't… he _wouldn't_. He'd never. He _loved _you? Past tense? No way. And even if he didn't love you anymore, saying that loving you wasn't enough doesn't even make sense, unless loving you wasn't enough to keep loving you, and_ that_ doesn't make any sense and... None of this makes sense. Dad's a writer and he loved you more than anything. He'd never spit out this bullshit."

"I know, Kiddo," Kate sighs, wrapping and arm around her would-be stepdaughter's shoulders and laying her head on top of the girl's. "Nothing about this is right, and I told you: I'm doing everything I can to get him home to you. _You _are the thing that he loves more than anything in this world. You _are _his world, Alexis."

"We both are," she disagrees, wrapping her arms around Kate.

She falls asleep there, half on top of her stepmother, and Kate doesn't have the heart to wake her up so that she herself can go to bed. When she wakes up in the morning Alexis is gone, and she's too eager to learn what Reagan Ford will have to say to go in search of her.

By the time she arrives at the precinct, Ryan is already on his way back from Greenwich. "Ryan just got out of his meeting with Reagan Ford," Esposito informs her, reading off of his phone as soon as she enters the bullpen. "She doesn't know who the man in the fake is, so we're still at a standstill there, but she has an idea of how he got her ID number. He'll explain in detail when he gets back."

The two of them sit at an empty desk against the wall as they wait. Esposito gets in touch with the state troopers, who assure them that they are working diligently on tracing the stolen cars path and will send them everything they have put together as soon as they can.

When Ryan arrives back he comes right over to them, sitting on the desk in front with a file folder in hand. "Here's what I found out," Ryan begins. "There's not a lot I found suspicious about the woman herself, but she was recently pulled over under what she describes as and I agree are suspicious circumstances. On her way home from work a few weeks ago, a middle-aged Caucasian officer got her for going only six over, and let her off with a warning."

"I'm not seeing the suspicion," Kate says.

"I'm getting there. If a pullover for only six over isn't weird enough, the officer was in an unmarked car and was wearing blues and an NYPD badge."

"Okay, that's a little stranger, but I'm still missing it..."

"She doesn't work in the city. She was pulled over in the outskirts of Hartford."

"And there it is," Kate agrees. "A uniformed officer in an unmarked car pulled her over for a nonexistent traffic violation with a badge way out of that jurisdiction."

"Right. But he pulled her over in broad daylight, with plenty of witnesses, and only ran her license before letting her go so she didn't think too much of it after that. However," he said proudly, flipping open his folder, "a search through the records from that part of Connecticut and the city show that no such incident occurred."

"So our mystery "officer" stole her drivers license number."

"Almost definitely. She's agreed to go into the city this afternoon and meet with one of our sketch artists, see if we can't get something close to what the guy looked like."

"Perfect. Thanks Ryan," Kate smiles, squeezing his shoulder as she stands. "You guys are putting everything into this and I can't tell you how much it means to me."

"He's our friend, too, Kate. We'd do anything for Castle, just like we would for you."

"I know," she nods, reaching for Ryan's folder and retreating into the break room before she cries in front of them _again_.

A few hours later all of their phones ding, alerting them to a mass text containing the artist's rendering of the faux cop. At first glance, there's not much that's familiar about it. Regardless, she ensures it's been sent to businesses in the area of the incident to see if anyone else saw the faux cop and / or knew who he was, and made sure that Tori was on top of facial recognition.

As the program rolls back at home, Kate focuses in on the tiny sketch on her screen. There's nothing notable about it, not really. If she had been asked to describe your average white guy, this would be about it. But as her gaze comes to rest on the eyes, something clicks. "Hey," she stops one of the passing unis. "Do any of your computers happen to have photoshop on them?"

"Not here," he shakes his head, "but my daughter's got it on her laptop if that'll work?"

She hands the officer her phone, nodding gratefully. "Can you send her that photo and ask her to make the eyes brown?"

"Sure thing. She'll text it back to you whenever she's done."

"Thank you."

Luckily, his daughter is quick and on the mark, returning the edited portrait within half an hour. She emails it to herself and prints it out, slapping it up on their board with the other photo she'd printed out while waiting.

"Boss, what are you doing?" Ryan asks tentatively, eyeing her sadly as she looks between the two photos.

"It's the eyes, Ryan. Look at their eyes."

"A lot of people have brown eyes."

"Cold. Calculating. Brilliant. That's how Reagan described them."

"I think you might be taking this part a bit too far," Ryan cautions. "This is something Castle would suggest. Wait until the evidence points us to that."

"Thought you were the one that always saw the reason in his crazy theories," she jokes but nods anyway, pretending to agree until he walks away. As her eyes drift back, first to the rendering and then to their latest photo of Jerry Tyson, her heart clenches and her stomach twists. In her gut, she knows that he's involved. She'll keep it to herself from now on, at least until she has something more solid than an instinct, but she knows.

She wonders if she should mention it to Alexis, but when she arrives home to find that Martha is still MIA, her bed unruffled and her bag missing, she knows there's more important things to focus on. She finds Alexis sitting on the balcony of their bedroom, legs dangling through the rails over the edge, and takes a seat next to her.

"Have you seen your grandmother today?" she asks, sticking one leg through the rails and tucking the other underneath it. "I'm starting to get worried."

"She went back to the city last night. She called me a few hours ago, said she couldn't handle the despair that being in the house that was supposed to bring so much joy brought. She thought she'd come back today, but I guess one night wasn't enough. She said she's sorry for abandoning us, but she thinks it's time to get back to her school before this new reality sucks her dry," she quotes, her index and middle fingers bending in the air.

"We all cope in different ways," Kate says, upon noticing Alexis' offended expression. "Martha did what was best for her, and we can't fault her for that. There's no correct way to handle this."

"You're right, I know… it just hurts that she'd run off like that so soon after… I feel like she's treating this like he's never coming back. Like he's already… _gone_. But he's not. He's out there somewhere, and you're going to find him, and where will she be? What will he think when he gets home and his own mother has given up on him?"

"She's not giving up, Alexis. She's…. living. She's just trying to keep living like you and I."

"She's doing it wrong," Alexis sighs before changing the subject. "Look, I know it's weird, given that I'm basically an adult and I haven't always had the best attitude for you, but… do you think I could sleep in your room? Would that bother you? I just don't know how to be close to him when he's so far away, and sleeping in my room is starting to feel desolate. Especially now that Gram is gone, too."

"Of course, Alexis. For as long as you need to. The only way we're going to get through this is together."

Alexis lays her head against Kate's shoulder, one arm wrapped around herself and the other clutching Kate's, and the two look out at the sunset, the sky a colorful palette of purple and blue, orange and pink.

"He has to be okay, right?" Alexis's voice is barely there, wind escaping past a cave-in. "We'd know if he wasn't, wouldn't we? We'd have to."

Kate doesn't have an answer for her. She likes to think she'd know if part of her heart suddenly ceased to exist, but she'd known nothing when her mother had died. She hadn't had a fucking clue. "All I know is that, for the time being, the sky is still blue."

* * *

_Oh, if you're hearing this  
I must have made it through  
Oh, when the clouds are burned  
Open up my window  
I see the sky's still blue_

-Sky's Still Blue

Andrew Belle


End file.
